Fortunately, many of the problems are the type that can be fixed by software, and Amazon’s going to take a shot at doing that. The New York Times reports that the online retail giant plans to post an update to the Fire’s Android-based operating system within the next two weeks.

There will be improvements in performance and multitouch navigation, and customers will have the option of editing the list of items that show what they have recently been doing. No more will wives wonder why their husbands were looking at a dating site when they said they were playing Angry Birds.

That’s fast for Amazon, which has been slow to update the firmware on its e-Ink-based line of Kindles. But touchscreen tablets are a different beast, and a far more competitive market. With Apple typically rolling out several iOS updates each year, Amazon can’t afford to let its software languish.

That’s particularly true given some of the customer reviews the Fire is getting on Amazon.com. The vast majority of the 4,737 reviews are 5-star, but there’s a sizable number of 1- and 2-star reviews as well, including many from people who say they have returned or are returning the device.

And Times writer David Streitfeld cites usability expert Jakob Nielsen’s critical remarks about the Fire. Nielsen tells the Times he thinks “the Fire is going to be a failure”.

While I think that’s probably a little extreme, Amazon.com does need to fix the device’s most pressing issues as soon as it can. It may be selling well now (Amazon has never offered exact numbers on the sales of its Kindles), but if enough people start complaining – particularly online – those sales could be cooled quickly.

Then there’s the fact that a new Fire next year is an inevitability. That device is likely to be a much better one, just as the second e-Ink Kindle was a vast improvement over the first.